


this tired mind (just wants to be led home)

by brahe



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Crew as Family, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Family, Flashbacks, Fluff, Food, Post-S01 E01: Spark of Rebellion, RebelsFourthExchange, S01 E01: Spark of Rebellion, Season/Series 01, everything I write always ends up being about food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 00:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14630703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brahe/pseuds/brahe
Summary: But then he’s leaving, anyway, after everything – after being left behind only to be rescued, after being called arebeland aJedi, after feeling like he was doing something his parents would be proud of him for – and it’s heavy, it hurts more than he thought it would.Kanan and Hera are waiting for him at the end of the cargo bay ramp, and he walks out slow, lingers, waits for a chance to –“I think you have something that belongs to me,” Kanan says, and Ezra shakes his head, tries to dislodge the hope that had started to grow so quickly.“Right,” Ezra mutters, mostly to himself, and he tosses the message box back to Kanan, the stolen lightsaber a heavy weight in his mind. “Good luck saving the galaxy."Or,Ezra, and his first few weeks on theGhost.





	this tired mind (just wants to be led home)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SweetSinger2010](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetSinger2010/gifts).



> a gift for SweetSinger2010 for the Rebels Fourth Exchange
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Tell me how's the way to go_  
>  _Tell me how's the way to see_  
>  _Show me all that I could[be](https://youtu.be/A_P9m8Ejr-Y)_  
> 

 

 

_prologue_

 

Sunlight streams through the windows on the west wall, although the shadows on the floor are growing longer. Ezra’s on the floor in the living room, the book he’d spent the afternoon reading laying abandoned beside him as he plays with his little figures - a loth cat and a loth wolf, and three that look like himself and his parents.

He can hear his dad in the kitchen making dinner, and he hopes it’s done soon; he’s getting hungry, but he’s not allowed to have a snack so close to mealtime.

“Ezra!” his mother calls, finally home for the day. He drops his toys in favor of rushing to greet her in the doorway, and she laughs when he barrels into her legs. She hangs her bag behind the door and bends down to scoop him into her arms, settling him on her hip. Ezra wraps his arms around her neck, presses a kiss to her cheek, and she smiles, kisses his forehead in return.

“How has your day been, baby?” she asks him as they walk towards the kitchen.

“Pretty good,” Ezra tells her. “I read some of my book today, and I only needed help with ten words!”

“Only ten words!” she repeats, sounding proud. “You’re getting to be so smart.”

Ezra puffs his chest a little, beaming, and they make it to the kitchen just as Ephraim is drying his hands. He smiles when he sees them, comes over to kiss the top of Ezra’s head, hand on Ezra’s back.

“Hello, dear,” Mira says, and Ezra giggles and leans away when they kiss.

“Good evening, my love,” Ephraim smiles. “You’re right on time, dinner’s just finished,” he tells her, and Ezra’s wiggling to get out of his mom’s arms, dashes for the plates and silverware to set the table.

“And I didn’t even have to ask,” his dad says, and Ezra smiles to himself as he sets out their plates and napkins. The sounds of his parents in the kitchen – his dad finishing dinner and his mom getting drinks – fade just a little, a pleasant background noise, and atmosphere is nice, warm. There’s a contented humming under his skin, and everything feels happy.

He looks at the setting sun outside the window and imagines he can feel it, imagines he can feel the rocks and the grass and the animals, and it’s calming, peaceful, consuming –

His dad comes in with dinner, then, and he forgets the sun and the creatures outside, sits down at the table across from his mom and listens excitedly to her stories from town.

 

\----

 

Ezra’s playing downstairs when his ball rolls away, bouncing into the door across from his parents’ office, the one room he’s never been in. The door’s always locked, and the one time he asked about it, his mother just ruffled his hair and told him it was storage, and nothing he should worry about.

The door’s not locked now, though - the ball has pushed the door open just a little, the inside pitch black. Ezra gets up and walks over to it, peering inside before stepping back to check around for his parents. He knows he shouldn’t go in, but he’s curious, and the door’s open.

The light from the hallway casts a dim glow in the room, making the shadows long and the corners inky. It's small, more of a large closet than a room. There's desks along two of the walls, and there's a holo projector set up on one of them.

Ezra looks around, careful to be quiet and mindful of the equipment. The room is full of things he's never seen before – little machines and big machines and tall machines and flat machines. On the third wall, there's a set of cabinets that go halfway up to the ceiling, and he finds himself in front of it as if called there. There's a humming in the air, strange but not frightening, familiar in a way like the bugs that come out as the sun sets.

Ezra runs his hands along the fronts of the doors, stopping when the humming tells him to. It's a small drawer on the side furthest from the door; he finds the handle, pulling it open slowly, and then he knows he’s been caught. He can sense his parents behind him before he even turns around, and when he does it’s slowly, guiltily. His dad’s in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, lit by the lights behind him. His mom’s standing just beside him, and he can’t tell how she’s feeling, can’t really tell how either of them are feeling, now that he’s trying to.

“The door was open,” he tells him, an excuse or an explanation, he’s not sure.

“Let’s go,” his father says, and Ezra hangs his head a little as he walks out of the room and between his parents, the weight of their disapproval heavy and uncomfortable, the drawer left open and the humming forgotten.

 

 

 

 

_part one_

 

Ezra’s sitting out on an empty crate on the hill above Tarkin Town, the cargo door of the _Ghost_ open behind him, his face in his hands as he thinks. He’s lived here under the Empire for years and hadn’t even known this place existed, that there were people suffering like he was, alone and forgotten, without anything to eat but with plenty to fear. He’s not sure how to feel about it – he’s spent so long looking out for just himself that it's a little foreign, this sudden urge he has to feel again like he did when that stranger thanked him for the food he had no hand in acquiring. In fact, he’d been trying to take it for himself, and while his grumbling stomach wouldn’t mind that, he doesn’t think it’d sit well with his consciousness.

He’s so lost in his thoughts that it takes him a while to really realize it, the strange, curious humming in the air around him. It’s calling to him, and when he focuses on it, he lets it draw him in, leading him up the ship’s ramp and into the hallway with the crew’s quarters. He stops in front of one of the doors, rests his hand against it for a moment and feels the humming much stronger now, here, almost a physical thing.

The door slides open and he steps into the room, dimly lit by the light in the hallway, barren. It looks unused, and he shakes his head, muttering to himself about listening to the _wind_ , except there’s a pull that’s keeping him here, and he sits down on the bed. There’s drawers underneath it, and he slides one open, pulls out a golden cube. It’s beautiful, whatever it is, intricately designed with little crystals in the middle and the corners. It sings to him as he holds it, a song he doesn't recognize but that still sounds familiar like a _deja-vu_ , and he turns it over in his hands, holds it up to inspect it.

He shrugs and places it in his bag – it’s probably worth a little money, at the very least, and that’s something he sorely needs. Easy money means easy food, and - well. That’s that.

There’s something else in the drawer, too, a silver cylinder that looks kind of like a handle attached to nothing. He picks it up, runs his fingers over the ribbing and the smoothed edges, stands without really meaning to when he does. If he thought the cube had been calling out for him, it has nothing on _this_. This weird silver thing is just about yelling at him, sounds Ezra couldn’t describe even if pressed, but like it’s asking him to do something, to -

A bright blue blade suddenly appears, extended from the tip of what he now realized is a hilt of a glowing sword. It lights up the room in a soft light, pulsing a little, and the hum Ezra had been hearing in his head echoes off the metal walls of the empty room. He swings the blade around, creating an arc of the beautiful blue light, and it’s a comfortable weight in his hands, strange in a familiar kind of way, like a memory from another life, and he wonders what it is, why it’s called so strongly to him.

He swings the blade around some more, brings it up in front of his face to get a better look at it, and then he knows he’s been caught.

“Careful. You’ll cut your arm off.”

He turns around slowly, sees Kanan standing in the doorway, backlight by the hall lights, his arms crossed and face stern. The captain, Hera, is standing just to his side, and with a jolt so hard he wonders if it was visible, he’s six years old again, in trouble with his parents for going into that basement room. He shakes his head just a little, blinks hard against the image of his parents that springs up, his father standing disapprovingly in the doorway of the secret room and a humming in the air –

Ezra looks down at the blade in his hands and he _knows,_ though he doesn't know how, that this was what was in that drawer all those years ago, something like this that had been calling to him in exactly the same way. He takes a deep breath, fighting off the sudden, strange feeling that grips him, and looks at Kanan and tries to think of something to say, something that won't give him away, won't expose him.

“Look,” Ezra says, mostly on autopilot, “I know you’re not gonna believe me, but it’s like this thing wanted me to take it.” It’s half a lie, but not entirely – he can feel that foreign-but-not-really call from the device in his hands tenfold now, and it's distracting, consuming –

“You’re right, I don’t believe you,” Kanan says. “Now hand me the lightsaber.”

 _Lightsaber_. He’s heard that before, stories his mother would tell him late at night when he couldn't sleep.

“Isn’t that the weapon of the Jedi?” he asks, before he even really thinks about it, and when he looks back to Kanan, the man’s face has darkened, eyes shuttered.

“Give it to me and get out,” he says, and Ezra hands it over, sliding out of the room past Kanan and Hera, mind whirling between thoughts of the past and the present.

 

\----

 

Kanan turns the lightsaber over in his hands, tosses it up once and catches it, the weight familiar, almost comforting. He watches Ezra walk down the hallway and thinks about their exchange – if Ezra could really hear the lightsaber calling out to him…

“Now we'll see,” Kanan says, mostly under his breath. Hera nods and rests a hand on his shoulder, squeezing just a little.

“It's okay,” she tells him, just as quiet. “We'll keep him safe.”

Kanan shakes his head but doesn't say anything, wrapping his arm around Hera's waist and holding her closer, his nose pressed to the top of her cap. The Force is calling out to him stronger than it has in years, impossible to ignore. He let Ezra take the Holocron as a test, to know for sure, but some part of him already knows. If he thinks about it hard enough, there's already the beginnings of a bond, a ghost of a feeling reminiscent of the one he had with Master Billaba, and it's dangerous – having one Jedi aboard causes enough trouble, but _two_ in one place…

He sighs, lets his eyes close for a moment and leans into Hera. “It's okay,” she repeats, and he hopes to the Force she's right.

 

\----

 

Ezra walks to the little kitchenette down the hall from the crew quarters, opens the cabinets on the wall until he finds the cups and pours himself some water. He leans against the counter, drinking slowly, lost in the memories he didn't realize he still had about that day in the basement

“Not too good at following directions, are you?”

Ezra looks up to see the crew’s other female member, the Mandalorian, enter the room. He blinks, shakes his head, waves his cup around.

“Eh, not so much,” he says, then raises an eyebrow. “You?”

The girl shakes her head, laughs to herself, but it’s a dark sound. “Never been my speciality,” she tells him, and Ezra suddenly wants to _know_ her, an inexplicable surge of feeling he’s never really had before.

“Who are you people?” Ezra asks, gesturing to the ship around him. He thinks about Tarkin Town, and the boxes of food they stole. “You’re not thieves, exactly.”

“We’re not exactly anything,” the girl tells him, and she sounds – defensive? Ezra frowns. “We’re a crew, a team...in some ways, a family.”

_Family._

When Ezra blinks, he’s sees his parents, the light of Lothal’s setting sun bathed over them as they sit down to dinner.

“What happened to your real family?” Ezra asks her, and he sees the way her shoulders tense, the way her face becomes a mask.

“The Empire,” she says, succinct, but enough. There’s an emotion in her voice that Ezra feels nearly every day, sitting alone in his parents’ old tower on the edge of town. “What happened to yours?” the girl asks, dragging Ezra out of his thoughts, but then the big hairy one – Zeb, he remembers – comes in, says something about Kanan and the common room, and the girl goes to follow him out the door, stopping only just before the hallway.

“Sabine,” she says, and Ezra feels as if he’s been trusted with something, some closely-guarded secret. “My name’s Sabine.”

Ezra stares into the dark after her, thinking about this ship of strangers, about family and stories of legendary heroes his mother used to tell him long into the night, and he starts to wonder if maybe leaving is really what he wants, still.

 

\----

 

But then he’s leaving, anyway, after everything – after being left behind only to be rescued, after being called a _rebel_ and a _Jedi_ , after feeling like he was doing something his parents would be proud of him for – and it’s heavy, it hurts more than he thought it would.

Kanan and Hera are waiting for him at the end of the cargo bay ramp, and he walks out slow, lingers, waits for a chance to –

“I think you have something that belongs to me,” Kanan says, and Ezra shakes his head, tries to dislodge the hope that had started to grow so quickly.

“Right,” Ezra mutters, mostly to himself, and he tosses the message box back to Kanan, the stolen lightsaber a heavy weight in his mind.

“Good luck saving the galaxy,” he tells them, sounds so bitter even to his own ears, and he takes off, steps off the ramp and runs, runs as fast as he can and then faster still, repeatedly tells himself _don’t turn around, don’t look back_ – and he’s not surprised when the grass before him blurs with tears, falling wet and warm on his cheeks, but he wonders why, why now. Maybe it’s the way he can’t stop seeing his parents in Kanan and Hera; maybe it’s the way he forgot what it felt like to be around so much happiness, love, support; maybe it’s the way he’s tired of always ending up alone, now.

 

He gets back to his tower and climbs to the living room, helmets laying around everywhere, the west wall windows boarded up – he stands in the middle of the room, looks around without seeing, lost too much in thought.

He takes the stolen lightsaber out of his bag and lets the bag fall to the floor as he holds the cool metal hilt in his hands, turning it over and running his fingers along the dips and ridges. He opens himself up to the call that’s still there, lets it wash over him.

The air around him shifts with something that’s already begun to feel familiar, safe, even, and he asks-

“What’s the Force?”

“The Force is everywhere,” Kanan says, and Ezra hears the shift of his clothing as he steps into the tower. “It surrounds us, penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. And it’s strong with you, Ezra. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to open the Holocron.”

Ezra turns just enough to look at Kanan. “So what do you want?” he asks, and he _hopes_ -

“To offer you a choice,” Kanan tells him. “You can keep the lightsaber you stole, let it just become another dusty souvenir,” he says, waving a hand around at the collection of helmets. “Or you can give it back and come with us, come with _me_ and be trained in the ways of the Force. You can learn what it truly means to be a Jedi.”

“I thought the Empire wiped out all the Jedi,” Ezra says, mouth on autopilot as his mind catches on Kanan’s words. Ezra already knows what his answer will be, and he suspects Kanan does, too.

“Not all of us,” Kanan says, and this call – _the Force,_ he thinks – surges within him, and he smiles at the lightsaber in his hands, grabs his bag and locks the door on his way out.

 

\----

 

They walk back to the _Ghost_ in a comfortable silence, Kanan ahead by half a step. His lightsaber is clipped to his belt now but Ezra can still hear it, and he wonders why it's calling out to him when it's Kanan's weapon. Another question he saves for later, for _Jedi training._ The thought makes him giddy, excited, takes up the majority of his brain space. He lets his fingers brush the tall blades of grass they walk through, reaching out with _the Force_ to sense it, and he gets lost in it, in the way the grass feels the wind and the sun and the tips of his fingers.

 

Kanan keeps glancing at him – he can sense it, somehow, that Kanan's thinking about him, a thread in that warm, safe air that surrounds him whenever Kanan's around.

He looks over, meeting Kanan's gaze, and Kanan offers him a smile but nothing else. There's plenty of time, Ezra thinks, to talk about the Jedi and the Force and the _Ghost_ and everything else; the quiet here on their short walk through Lothal’s plains is nice, comforting in a way, and so Ezra simply smiles back and they continue on.

 

Hera's waiting for them, standing in the open door of the cargo bay like she was when Ezra first left. She smiles when she sees them, and she meets them at the end of the ramp, wrapping Ezra into a warm hug.

“I wasn't sure I'd get to see you again so soon,” Hera tells him, squeezes him just a little tighter. “But I'm very glad.”

She lets him go and Ezra's blushing, he can feel it in his cheeks, but he doesn't know what to say. He looks to Kanan – who's got a soft, homey kind of smile on his face that reminds Ezra of weekend mornings sandwiched between his parents, so clearly in love – and then looks to Hera, and rubs a hand on the back of his neck.

“Me, too,” he says, “thanks.”

He's thanking her for more than just the warm welcome, and from the way her face softens, he thinks she knows.

“Well, come on, then,” she says. “Kanan promised to make me something for dinner.”

The bubble seems to last around Kanan for a moment longer, before he's shaking his head but agreeing.

“Since you asked so nicely,” he laughs, winding an arm around Hera's waist and tugging her to his side so he can press a kiss to her temple. They turn to the ship, Hera reaching out to grab Ezra and tucking him under her arm, the three of them walking up the ramp linked together, and Ezra's happy, so, so happy, the Force around him content and shimmering, Kanan's presence nearly glowing, and for the first time in a long time, he knows he's made the right decision.

 

 

 

 

_part two_

 

“Are you sure you got enough to eat?” Kanan asks him, eyebrow raised. Ezra looks from his now-empty plate to Kanan, and nods.

“I’m sure,” he says, and settles back into the booth seat. Kanan makes a noise like he still doesn’t believe him, but he goes back to the stove, so Ezra counts it as a win.

It’s not that he didn’t get enough pancakes - it’s just that this is his first lazy day, non-leftover or ration bar breakfast as official crew and it happens to be one of the first meals he hasn’t had to beg for or steal in years, and he doesn’t want to push. There’s still three more people on this ship that have to eat, anyway.

Hera walks into the kitchen, then, yawning as she crosses the threshold, and she stops next to Kanan, and Ezra does his best to watch without staring.

“Looking good, love,” she says, and – and Ezra has some suspicions, right, he has eyes and ears and he’s already spent a few days on the _Ghost_ , but –

“I was hoping you’d get more sleep,” Kanan tells her, and Ezra can’t see all of his face, but there’s a look he can make out there that he hasn’t seen since he was seven years old.

Hera hums, grabbing some of the freshly-finished pancakes and dropping them onto her plate. “I’m fine. Really, I am,” she says. “Besides…” She trails off and neither of them even say anything, but Ezra knows she’s talking about him, and he sinks further into the booth and stares at his empty plate.

“Ezra,” Hera calls him, and he looks up and pretends like he hasn’t been listening to them. “Do you want any more pancakes?”

Ezra shakes his head. “No thanks, I’m fine,” he tells her, and he thinks he hears Kanan mutter something that sounds a lot like _“that’s what he told me, too.”_

“Suit yourself,” Hera says with a smile, and grabs a fourth pancake from the stack. She comes and sits next to him, and he only realizes he’s staring at her plate when she starts talking.

“How did you sleep last night?” she asks, and Ezra shrugs.

“Fine,” he tells her, which is true. It’s nice to have been upgraded to a real bed on the ship, but it’s been so long since he’s slept in anything except silence that Zeb’s snoring and the sounds of the ship kept him awake.

“Good,” she nods, offering him a smile. “I’m glad you decided to join us.”

 _Me, too_ , Ezra thinks, but Sabine walks in, then, and saves him from having to answer.

“Mm, smells good in here, Kanan!” she says, grabbing a plate off the counter. Kanan grins and flips the two freshly-done pancakes onto Sabine’s plate. She grabs two more from the stack of already finished ones, and slides into the booth next to Hera.

“I’ve got a new art piece to show you,” Sabine tells Hera as she digs into her pancakes. “It’s on the ceiling over my desk. I think you’ll really like it.”

“You’ll have to show me after breakfast,” Hera says, and Ezra – Ezra feels like an outsider. _In some ways, like a family,_ he remembers, and this is exactly that. He can't help thinking about mornings from eight years ago, the smells of fresh breakfast wafting through the house on the weekends, the memories mostly sunlight and laughter and watching the bubbles form and pop on the uncooked side of the pancakes from the vantage point on his father's hip.

“Here,” Kanan says quietly, leaning over into his space, and Ezra startles out of his thoughts, sitting up out of where he's sunk into the booth cushion. He blinks at Kanan, who drops two more pancakes onto Ezra's plate.

“I saw you looking at Sabine's plate,” Kanan says, and Ezra blushes, guilty, but Kanan's smiling. “Figured you wanted some more.”

Ezra sits up, looks sheepishly at Kanan.

“Yeah,” he admits, picking up his fork, “thanks.”

“No problem,” Kanan says, leaning back into his own spot next to Ezra. “Really, I mean it. No one goes hungry on my watch.”

Ezra offers Kanan a shadow of a smile, and eats these pancakes slower. The conversation at the table’s picked up, again, day plans and dinner plans and art plans, and Ezra's outside it all again, new to the crew and rusty at these kinds of mornings. The air in the room is content – Ezra’s mostly surrounded by the feeling he's come to recognize as Kanan, strong and warm and safe, but he can feel hints of Hera and Sabine, too, all their signatures mixing into something familiar and peaceful and he _wants_ this,surprises himself with how much he wants this to be the home it already feels like.

 

\----

 

Sabine's door is open, later, when Ezra's on the way to the cockpit, and he stops and debates it for a moment before he decides, knocking gently against the side of the ship and standing partly in the doorway.

“Hey,” he says, and Sabine looks up, surprised.

“Oh, hey, Ezra. What's up?”

“Nothing,” he shrugs, moves so he's leaning against the wall just inside her door. The room is covered in color – he remembers she likes art. “I was just kinda curious about all…this,” he adds, waving a hand around to encompass her bunk.

“My art?” she asks, gets up off her bed. “I've always liked painting,” she tells him. “When Kanan and Hera picked me up, Kanan gave me a paintbrush and Hera gave me permission to paint on whatever I wanted.” She pauses, and Ezra nods, already distracted by the pictures on the walls. “You can look around if you want,” she says, and sits back on her bed, legs over the side, watching Ezra move around the room.

He walks slow, takes in every piece. It's so colorful in here, so full of life, so very different from his tower. There's pictures of the crew, pictures of faces he doesn't know, pictures of stormtroopers in red circles, and at least a dozen firebirds rising out of orange, purple, pink flames. It only takes him a few minutes to make his way around the room, but by the end he feels like he knows Sabine twice as well, like he's seen her thoughts and her feelings but in color.

“You're really good,” he tells her, looking over at her from where he was studying the wall.

“Thanks,” she says. She looks down at her hands, wringing them together, and Ezra catches the faintest trace of her in the air around him, something brilliant and strong. “I didn't get to do much before I came on, but I have a lot of time to practice, now,” she tells him. “Hera's nice enough to let me use her ship as a canvas, and Kanan – Kanan's always been supportive of me, of my art. He'll bring me new paints and brushes and things, it's – it's nice, to have that…that support. You know?”

Ezra hums. “I did,” he says, quiet, and maybe it's too honest, but he's been overwhelmed by memories of his parents all day, all week, really. “I never got to answer that question, but…but the Empire, for me, too.”

Sabine says nothing – there isn't anything really to say, honestly, and Ezra clears his throat, points to a picture on the ceiling. “Is this the new one you were talking about earlier?”

Sabine gets off the bed and comes to stand next to Ezra, looks up to the painting.

“Yeah,” she says. “Started the sketch before the Wookie job, and I finished it last night. _Sunrise on Lothal,_ I'm gonna call it.”

He can see it, now, the arcs purples and blues that fade into yellows and oranges that dissipate on the edges like a rising sun, and there's something that grips him, then, staring up at this artwork, something that feels like a sunrise, new and fresh and full of hope.

 

\----

 

Ezra wanders into the kitchen later, after he and Sabine left behind heavy emotion and wasted hours playing what she told him were _sleepover games_ **_,_ ** whatever that meant, but he knows her much better now, knows what she would want if she ever got stranded on a deserted planet and that her guilty pleasure is trashy novels from the Old Republic era.

Kanan's in the kitchen, already, and Zeb’s there too, standing over the stove. Ezra hovers in the doorway for a moment, debating whether or not he wants to break up what they have going, but he knows Kanan can tell he's there, so he walks in anyway.

“Hey, kid,” Zeb greets, gives him a half-wave with the spatula in his hand.

“Uh, hey,” Ezra nods, mentally curses himself for being so awkward. “Smells good,” he adds, because it's true – whatever Zeb’s cooking smells amazing.

“Bantha stir fry,” Zeb tells him. “One of Kanan's favorites.”

“Hey now,” Kanan pipes up from where he's settled into the booth with a pad in his hand. “You're making it for yourself, don't lie. Lying is bad.”

Ezra looks back to Zeb, who offers him a grin and a shrug. “It's one of my favorites, too,” he says. “Do you want some?”

Ezra finds himself in a brief moment of panic – he doesn't want to take food away from Kanan and Zeb, but he's hungry and it smells good, and he remembers what Kanan told him that morning, so he says, “Sure, sounds good,” and grabs three plates out of the cabinet.

“Grab two more,” Zeb tells him, as Kanan calls from across the room,

“You're gonna love it. Everyone always does.”

“Everyone?” Zeb scoffs, but there's laughter in his voice. “I've only cooked this for the four people I live with.”

Kanan crosses his arms. “Like I said,” he says, grins when Ezra looks over at him. “Everyone that matters.”

Zeb flicks the stovetop off then, scoops some of the bantha and vegetable combination into each of the plates. He picks up three of them, balancing two on his arm, and turns to the door. “Enjoy your lunch,” he tells them, and to Ezra he adds, “Eat up, you're looking skinny.”

Ezra manages to get out a delayed thanks through the surprise before Zeb disappears down the hallway, and he brings his and Kanan's plate to the booth.

“I didn't know Zeb could cook,” he says, when they're settled in and eating. “This is delicious, though.”

“It took a while to get him back in the kitchen, after we picked him up,” Kanan tells him. “He didn't really start cooking again until Sabine came on.”

Ezra hums, thinking about the ship's dynamic. “How does that all work, anyway?” he asks, not sure how else to say it.

“How does the crew work, you mean?” Kanan says, though he's fairly certain that's not entirely what Ezra means.

Ezra chews, silent for a moment, and Kanan's careful not to push.

“How does – you've all been on the ship for a while, right?” Ezra asks. “How does that work?”

“We're a family,” Kanan says, simple, to the point. “We have each other's backs every time, everywhere.”

They're silent for a moment, Kanan watching Ezra think it over.

“It's more than that, though,” Ezra says, mostly to himself, and Kanan thinks about what he could say to that, but Ezra continues.

“How did you all meet?” he asks, and Kanan smiles. This is a story he would happily tell a hundred times, and then a hundred times more.

“Hera and I ran into each other on Gorse. We were both a little different back then, but – but I think a part of me knew, right away, that she was it.” There's a soft, fond look on Kanan's face, one Ezra had gotten used to seeing on his father's face a lifetime ago.

“She saved my life,” he tells Ezra. “In more ways than one. And then I joined her crew, and for awhile it was just us and Chopper against the Empire.

“We picked up Zeb a couple years later. We were near Lasan on the heels of their war with the Empire, and Hera took us in to see what we could do.” Kanan pauses, takes a breath. He still sees it so clearly – remembers the gritty smoke in his eyes, the smell of burning organics, climbing through ruin and rubble, looking for survivors.

“He's one of the last of his kind,” Kanan says. “He's the only one we found that day.”

Ezra says nothing to that, doesn't know what he could even say about it. He's wallowed for so long in the pain the Empire causes him that it was easy to forget other people's lives were just as wrecked.

“Sabine joined us not too long after that,” Kanan continues, and he sounds almost wistful, lost in memories. “She was in a bad spot,” Kanan says. “Didn't want to talk to any of us for a while, but we broke through.” The smile on his face is wide and genuine and sweet, and when the memory of his father's big, happy grin resurfaces, Ezra wishes for the first time he didn't always see his parents in everything.

“We were together for a while, before we picked you up. It's always been more than just a crew, though.”

That much is obvious, Ezra thinks. If he'd been paying closer attention, he would've seen it in their actions – did see it, a bit, even in the short time he spent with them – but it was the _feeling_ that got him more than anything. Stepping onto the _Ghost_ for the first time felt like stepping back in time, to seven, eight, nine years ago when the atmosphere in the tower was always content and familiar and warm. That kind of devotion, that kind of love lingered in the air, always there underneath everything.

(It's part of what made living in the tower so hard, but impossible to give up – the phantom feels of his parents’ love like a gentle breeze that grew fainter and less frequent with time.)

“My parents are gone,” Ezra tells Kanan, voice small and quiet; it hurts like a physical thing to say out loud, and he curls a little tighter into himself.

Kanan realizes in a short, vivid moment exactly how young Ezra is, how alone he's been.

Kanan bites back a sigh, a heavy, sad sound. “I know,” he says, because he'd figured as much.

“I haven't had…anyone. In years,” Ezra continues. His eyes are shining, his face slowly turning a splotchy red. “It's hard,” he admits, a whisper, really, and Kanan feels his heart break.

He reaches across the small space between them and wraps an arm around Ezra, bringing him closer and tucking him against his side. He rubs at Ezra’s arm, and turns to press his face against the hair at the side of Ezra's head.

“I know,” he says, because he does – he's been where Ezra is now, felt that pain for years, and he's not exaggerating when he says Hera saved him. “I know. It's okay.”

Ezra presses himself to Kanan's chest, shaking and sniffling, and Kanan holds him tighter, trying and failing not to think about how this is likely the first hug he's had in just about half his life.

He's so, so glad they found Ezra when they did.

 

\----

 

“Ezra!” Hera calls him from the bottom of the ladder. “Dinner’s almost ready!”

Ezra saves his page and shuts down the pad, tucking it into a pocket before sliding down the ladder. Hera's still standing at the bottom, and she throws an arm over his shoulder as they walk to the kitchen.

“What were you doing up there?” she asks. Ezra shrugs.

“Reading, mostly,” he says. “And I started looking at some star charts. Thanks for the pad,” he says, probably for the third time, and Hera smiles.

“Of course,” she says. “If you run out of things to read, let me know. I have plenty of suggestions.”

“Okay,” Ezra laughs, “I will. What's for dinner?”

“I'm not sure,” Hera tells him. “Kanan's making something.”

They get to the kitchen, then, and Hera lets go of Ezra with a quick squeeze of his shoulder, and he heads to the booth, where Sabine's already sitting.

Hera stops by the stove where Kanan's standing over a frying pan, stirring something that smells amazing.

“Hello, dear,” Hera says, leaning up to press a kiss to Kanan's cheek. He wraps an arm around her waist before she can leave, pulling her against his side.

“Good evening, my love,” he says, and when they kiss Ezra's expecting it, sees the image of his parents overlayed like a mostly-translucent holo. It's the first time he's heard his parents’ voices so clearly in longer than he'd like to think about, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut against the onslaught of feeling, sees the way the kitchen was that night so many years ago against the dark of his eyelids.

When he opens his eyes again, he's on the _Ghost,_ Hera standing at the end of the booth next to him, gentle hand on his shoulder and a worried look on her face.

“You okay?” Kanan asks from the stove, looking at Ezra over his shoulder.

Ezra looks from Kanan to Hera, reaches up to put a hand over Hera's on his shoulder. “Yeah,” he nods, full of conviction. “I'm okay,” he says, and means it.

**Author's Note:**

> many many thanks to [SweetSinger2010](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetSinger2010/pseuds/SweetSinger2010) for waiting so long for this and working with me! I hit a lot of writer's blocks and hard times on this fic, but I'm happy with how it turned out, and I hope you like it! I strayed a little far from the original prompt, but my mind just ran with this.
> 
> and as always, my eternal love and thanks to [Inconocible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inconocible/pseuds/inconocible) for reading over this and helping me over the road blocks ily & idk what I'd do without you (also did u notice how I lowkey stole your note format)
> 
> also news, i made a sideblog for my writing, catch me on tumblr at [brahewrites](https://brahewrites.tumblr.com)


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